Tividale FC

Report

Emirates FA Cup
Extra Preliminary Round
Saturday 10th August 2019
Tividale 2-1 Wednesfield

Tivi’ scrape past Wenny Boys

In what was as expected a very tight FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round tie.Tividale although not at their best just got the better of a very talented Wednesfield side.

Tividale went into the game with a bit of a midfield crisis. Luke Carter and his partner Brittany were waiting for the imminent arrival of his baby son. Curtis Cocking had begun a three match ban for the red card he received last week against Coventry Sphinx and Cameron Milne had a re occurrence of the hamstring injury that had kept him out of the last 3 pre season friendlies and two league games. With only Liam Wilkinson and Harvey Walker available from the engine room, centre back Freddie Watts was asked to play in the holding role and Matt Hunt was brought in at centre back.

The game was only 5 minutes old when manager Dave King was thrown into more turmoil when Watts received an impact injury to his thigh and was unable to shake it off and so had to be replaced. With no midfielder on the bench, forward Tom Garratt was asked to do a major job in the middle of the park.

Possibly against the run of play. based on which side looked the most threatening,Tividale took the lead on 13 minutes. A throw in from Tom Hurdman found Dan Smith with by far too much space on the edge of the Wednesfield penalty area. The forward then took one touch to get it out of his feet and then hammered the ball across Wednesfield keeper Callum Smith and into the bottom corner of his net.

Even a goal down Wednesfield carried on attacking the home side and they were unlucky not to level the scores on 25 minutes when a Will Osbourne overhead kick came back off the cross bar. They did get their goal three minutes later though when James Kelly was brought down in the penalty area by Matt Hunt and Ellis Blakemore scored from the spot. The rest of the half was just littered with blows on the referee’s whistle as a host of petty, niggly little fouls crept into the game

 Half Time: Tividale 1-1 Wednesfield

The second half started as the first ended with the game never having any fluency due to the constant blowing of the referees whistle. It was literally 30 minutes into the half when the first chance of note came. Dan Bryson still up from a corner whipped a cross into the Wednesfield area and Smith met it with a scissor kick that went straight into the arms of keeper Smith.

With 9 minutes to go Tividale hit the front again. A Welding run was abrupted when he was the victim of a bit of rough house treatment this time from Jack Grice right on the edge of the Wednesfield ‘D’. Jake Webb stepped up and buried the free kick.

Wednesfield absolutely threw everything at their hosts in those final minutes and with 4 minutes to go Cheshire had to make two brilliant saves. The first turning a Callum Wood shot around the post for a corner and from the resulting corner the Tividale keeper again did well to keep out a Blakemore shot. With time running out Wednesfield had one more massive chance but again Cheshire denied Wood with a brilliant near post save.

So in the end it was Tividale who advanced into the next round and a home tie against Chasetown FC. Wednesfield were unlucky to get nothing out of the game. But unfortunately you never always get what you deserve and Wednesfield will be feeling the same as we did 12 months ago after the Sporting Khalsa defeat at the same stage of the tournament,

Full Time: Tividale 2-1 Wednesfield

Photo by 353 Photography